Duck and cover

Two arrested in connection with shootout with deputies, one of a spate shooting incidents since January

A spate of shootings since January — two of them fatal, one involving a shootout with sheriff’s deputies and the last one resulting in the critical wounding of a 4-year-old boy — could be the result of a new law requiring the early release of inmates to reduce prison overcrowding, a police official told the Weekly.

Four people, including the child, were wounded in two of three separate recent shooting attacks, the first one occurring last Thursday and involving two Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department deputies on East Orange Grove Boulevard, near Mar Vista Avenue. And that incident, for which an early release parolee was one of two men arrested in connection with a home-invasion robbery and allegedly opening fire on deputies investigating that crime, marked the third shooting in that neighborhood in less than three months, two of those separate attacks resulting in two deaths.

Pasadena police spokeswoman Lt. Tracey Ibarra said the dramatic rise in shootings may be the result of Assembly Bill 109, the legislative response to a federal court order to reduce state prison populations. “Criminals are getting no sentences or small sentences and then have no restrictions once they get back into the community,” Ibarra said.

The most recent incident on Friday night in the 1800 block of Summit Avenue left a 4-year old boy in critical condition after police said three men opened fire on the child’s home, striking the boy in the torso and wounding two men inside the dwelling.

Ibarra said that shooting may be related to another incident the day before in which a teenage boy was shot near the same location on Summit Avenue. In that attack, the teen suffered minor injuries after being shot at about 8:30 p.m.

The wounding of the teenager occurred a few hours after two suspects in a home-invasion robbery fired upon two sheriff’s deputies on East Orange Grove Boulevard. In relation to that incident, early release parolee Michael Garrett, 22, was arrested and charged Tuesday with one count of attempted murder, assault with a deadly weapon and an additional felony count of being a parolee with a gun. According to Sandi Gibbons, a spokeswoman for the LA County District Attorney’s Office, Garrett has two previous felony convictions.

Also arrested was Eddie McFadden, 20. McFadden is charged with abusing an 89-year-old woman in the robbery, three counts of assault with a deadly weapon, two counts of criminal threats and one count of unlawful possession of a gun.

The incident marked the third outbreak of gunfire in that neighborhood in less than three months. In January, Zane Goldstein was shot and killed during a marijuana sale gone wrong near the corner of Chester Avenue and Maple Street. In that case, Peter Parra, 35, of Pasadena; Kevin Jessie Cabrera, 25, of North Hollywood; Raymond Frank Conchas Jr., 23, of Covina; and Ruby Conchas, 20, of Covina await trial on murder charges.

On Feb. 28, police, responding to calls of shots fired, found 35-year-old Tyrone English of Monrovia fatally wounded in the 600 block of North Mar Vista, two blocks south of Orange Grove. No arrests have been made in that case.